from the dammit,-we-said-terrorists,-not-tourists! dept

So, back in March, the Washington Post published a report about the NSA's MYSTIC program, where it was recording all phone calls from an unnamed country. The Washington Post chose not to reveal that country, leading many folks to assume that it was going to be a country like Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq. Would you believe... that it was actually the Bahamas? Ryan Devereaux, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras have the long and detailed story over at The Intercept, revealing the SOMALGET program, a part of MYSTIC, which recorded every phone call from the Bahamas, not for terrorism, but to be able to hand over information about illegal drugs to the DEA.

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government. Instead, the agency appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country's cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the "full-take audio" of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month.

Other countries being targeted under MYSTIC, as revealed by the Intercept: Mexico, the Philippines and Kenya. There is also one other, unnamed, country that the US is recording all calls for, but even The Intercept won't reveal that one (noting: "specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence"). Either way, this has resulted in plenty of people pointing out that "tourists" and "terrorists" are not the same thing -- while noting that tourism is 60% of GDP in the Bahamas, with 85% of those tourists come from the US. Others have pointed out that, perhaps, the use of the Bahamas was just a convenient testbed where most people wouldn't notice, and where the information could easily be useful for the NSA's partners at the DEA. Though, on that front, Julian Sanchez points out that one of the reasons the NSA got in trouble back in the 1970s with the Church Committee, was because the government used the NSA to evade limits on domestic wiretaps for illegal drugs.

As the report notes, the purpose of SOMALGET seems to have nothing to do with stopping terrorism, but is entirely about helping the DEA in its drug war efforts. And, of course, that also explains how the US was able to set this up. Basically, the DEA has a good relationship with the government in the Bahamas, and when it needed to set up phone taps, it appears that the Bahamas more or less let them bring in their own contractors to set up the phone taps. And, rather than just set it up to tap some individuals, the NSA swooped in and helped those "contractors" tap the entire phone network because... "collect it all." Note how the "cover name" for the MYSTIC access provider is blacked out here:

The report further highlights that the DEA is one of the world's largest intelligence agencies, and often has greater access in a variety of countries, because those countries don't view it as "an intelligence agency" but rather as a drug fighting force. That has helped the NSA piggyback on the DEA for access in multiple countries.

Also, of interest, is the fact that, while the Bahamas is considered a popular place for money laundering and financial institutions to hide taxes, the NSA doesn't seem even remotely interested in that kind of law breaking. Because why bother taking on real crimes when you can focus on busting pot dealers:

Somehow, this kind of stuff doesn't make me feel any safer, as the NSA and its defenders insist. It makes me feel the opposite.

Apparently, this is a relatively new capability -- the program launched in 2009 and reached "full capacity" in 2011.

In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording “every single” conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.

The call buffer opens a door “into the past,” the summary says, enabling users to “retrieve audio of interest that was not tasked at the time of the original call.” Analysts listen to only a fraction of 1 percent of the calls, but the absolute numbers are high. Each month, they send millions of voice clippings, or “cuts,” for processing and long-term storage.

While the Washington Post agreed not to reveal what countries MYSTIC is operational in, it's difficult to see how the NSA could do this without assistance (knowing or unknowing) from the various telcos in the targeted countries. And, of course, once this effort is online, the NSA just wants to keep expanding it:

Some of the documents provided by Snowden suggest that high-volume eavesdropping may soon be extended to other countries, if it has not been already. The RETRO tool was built three years ago as a “unique one-off capability,” but last year’s secret intelligence budget named five more countries for which the MYSTIC program provides “comprehensive metadata access and content,” with a sixth expected to be in place by last October.

Basically, once the NSA has the ability to snoop on everyone's phone calls, it only wants to do more of that. And more and more.

As Gellman's report notes, this seems to (once again) contradict claims by US officials, including President Obama, that "the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security... and that we take their privacy concerns into account." Of course, that all depends on how you define "spying." In the "collect it all" world of the NSA, merely collecting that data isn't considered "spying."

This program also helps to explain why the NSA has been so focused on getting that massive data center online in Bluffdale, Utah. There had been talk that the NSA had too much data to store and analyze effectively, but prior leaks didn't seem to involve enough data to really cause a problem. However, storing the audio of 30 days of every phone call in a half a dozen (or more!) countries could certainly add up quite quickly. And, indeed, that's what the documents suggest. Another document notes that this project "has long since reached the point where it was collecting and sending home far more than the bandwidth could handle." Hence: Utah.

And, of course, having full audio of all phone calls can lead to all sorts of detailed information, including information on Americans (who, remember, the NSA isn't supposed to spy on):

Highly classified briefings cite examples in which the tool offered high-stakes intelligence that would not have existed under traditional surveillance programs in which subjects were identified for targeting in advance. Unlike most of the government’s public claims about the value of controversial programs, the briefings supply names, dates, locations and fragments of intercepted calls in convincing detail.

Present and former U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide context for a classified program, acknowledged that large numbers of conversations involving Americans would be gathered from the country where RETRO operates.

The NSA does not attempt to filter out their calls, defining them as communications “acquired incidentally as a result of collection directed against appropriate foreign intelligence targets.”

At this point, these kinds of leaks aren't that surprising, but this does confirm some people's suspicions about the NSA's capabilities -- and the continuing mission creep as it gets more and more powerful in what information it can collect and store.